New Gateway Notebook Ideal For K-12 Students

Gateway&'s new M250E notebook computer is ideal for professional users as well as the K-12 education segment. The highly configurable notebook lets solution providers give their customers the exact mobile solution they need. And even with a 14-inch wide-screen display and a fully loaded system, the M250E still weighs less than 6 pounds, so it&'s easy for an adult or child to carry around. It is fairly rugged, too, so it can stand up to the abuse that young users might put it through.

The M250E presents few hassles to solution providers and IT departments. Gateway sticks with consistent software images and hardware platforms so the same computers and accessories can be used over an extended life cycle. The M250E shares common accessories such as the port replicator and AC adapter with other current and future Gateway notebooks. This lets IT departments standardize on a single notebook platform.

The design of the M250E helps make it easy to use and easy to carry.

Because it&'s a wide-screen unit, its extra width makes it as comfortable to use as a 15-inch notebook, but with the shallow depth and easy portability of a 12-inch notebook, it will easily fit into a backpack or briefcase, even with its full-size keyboard.

Gateway offers more battery options than most other vendors. The standard battery for the M250E is a six-cell unit that can provide up to four hours of life. A nine-cell battery costs $20 more and will power the notebook for up to five hours, while $40 more gets a 12-cell battery that lasts up to seven hours. For $20 less, users can have a four-cell travel battery that only lasts up to three hours but trims the weight of the notebook to less than 5 pounds.

The bigger the battery, the more it bulges out of the bottom of the notebook; depending on the battery, the thickness of the notebook ranges from 1.10 to 1.24 inches.

The base model M250S, priced at $850, includes a Celeron processor and the essential features needed by students or anyone on a budget. All M250s feature a 14-inch WXGA wide-screen display with a native resolution of 1,280 x 768. This size display provides 25 percent more viewing space than a standard 15-inch display, so it&'s perfect for both business and pleasure. Business users can view two documents or Web pages side-by-side while pleasure seekers can watch the latest DVD movie in wide-screen format. A $10 ultrabright display option eliminates the antiglare coating for the brightest possible image.

A high-end M250E costs $1,799. It features a 2GHz Pentium M processor, 512 Mbytes of dual-channel DDR2 memory, an 80-Gbyte hard drive, an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900, both wireless and Gigabit Ethernet and a V.92 modem. An 8X multiformat double-layer DVD+/- R/RW drive will play DVD movies as well as record on blank DVDs and CDs. All Gateway M250s come loaded with Windows XP Home or Windows XP Pro.

Gateway&'s ProNet Program was launched in October 2003. Three levels of participation are determined on volume and revenue projection. The three levels include Associate Member, Member and Premier Member. The Associate level targets solution providers buying less than $50,000 of Gateway hardware and services per quarter. Associate Members have access to Gateway&'s eSource online quoting tool, product training and Webinars, 24x7 technical support and a listing in the partner locator on Gateway&'s Web site. The Member level targets commercial solution providers buying between $50,000 and $250,000 per quarter; they receive all the benefits of the Associate level with deeper product discounts, 45-day credit terms, an assigned inside account representative, program tools, marketing support, access to Gateway&'s Custom Integration Services group and joint-selling opportunities. Premier Members buying more than $250,000 per quarter receive all the benefits of the Associate and Member levels, with further product discounts, an assigned ProNet inside account manager and a field representative to assist in selling activities.